The Tour is Won on the Alpe PDF Download

Author: Jean-Paul Vespini
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781934030233
Category : Bicycle racing
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
If there is one mountain climb that embodies the spirit and magic of the Tour de France, it is the Alpe d'Huez. Its twenty-one hairpin turns and average gradient of 8.1 percent over 13.1 kilometers have become legendary, changing the careers of Americans Greg LeMond and Lance Armstrong, and nearly destroying Jan Ullrich and Marco Pantani. Here at last is the definitive history and unforgettable story of cycling's greatest challenge. In The Tour is Won on the Alpe: The Classic Battles of the Tour de France, cycling historian Jean-Paul Vespini tells the story of this celebrated climb and the mountain that so often acts as the ultimate arbiter for cycling's biggest prize. Each chapter covers one ascent, starting with Fausto Coppi's astonishing victory in 1952. Cycling's most famous names are all present and accounted for: Coppi, Eddy Merckx, Bernard Hinault, Pedro Delgado, Miguel Indurain, Marco Pantani, and of course the American victors Greg LeMond and Lance Armstrong. Jean-Paul Vespini's riveting descriptions of each battle to the top include candid interviews with riders, new insight into epic rivalries, and little-known but fascinating facts about the climb that has become a rite of passage for every rider in the peloton.

Author: Geraint Thomas
Publisher: Hachette UK
ISBN: 1787479048
Category : Sports & Recreation
Languages : en
Pages : 270

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The inspirational inside story from the 2018 Tour de France and Sports Personality of the Year winner "This year G was the strongest rider, and he finally had Lady Luck on his side. An unstoppable combination" Chris Froome "I understood what Geraint's win meant: for him, for me, for the team, and for Wales, too" Dave Brailsford "Wow!" Thierry Henry For years Geraint Thomas appeared blessed with extraordinary talent but jinxed at the greatest bike race in the world: twice an Olympic gold medallist on the track, Commonwealth champion, yet at the Tour de France a victim of crashes, bad luck and his willingness to sacrifice himself for his team-mates. In the summer of 2018, that curse was blown away in spectacular fashion - from the cobbles of the north and the iconic mountain climbs of the Alps to the brutal slopes of the Pyrenees and, finally, the Champs-Elysees in Paris. As a boy, G had run home from school on summer afternoons to watch the Tour on television. This July, across twenty-one stages and three weeks, and under constant attack from his rivals, he made the race his own. With insight from the key characters around Geraint, this is the inside story of one of the most thrilling and heart-warming tales in sport. Not only can nice guys come first - they can win the biggest prize of all.

Author: Tyler Hamilton
Publisher: Bantam
ISBN: 0345530438
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 306

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“The holy grail for disillusioned cycling fans . . . The book’s power is in the collective details, all strung together in a story that is told with such clear-eyed conviction that you never doubt its veracity. . . . The Secret Race isn’t just a game changer for the Lance Armstrong myth. It’s the game ender.”—Outside NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • WINNER OF THE WILLIAM HILL SPORTS BOOK OF THE YEAR AWARD The Secret Race is the book that rocked the world of professional cycling—and exposed, at long last, the doping culture surrounding the sport and its most iconic rider, Lance Armstrong. Former Olympic gold medalist Tyler Hamilton was once one of the world’s top-ranked cyclists—and a member of Lance Armstrong’s inner circle. Over the course of two years, New York Times bestselling author Daniel Coyle conducted more than two hundred hours of interviews with Hamilton and spoke with numerous teammates, rivals, and friends. The result is an explosive page-turner of a book that takes us deep inside a shadowy, fascinating, and surreal world of unscrupulous doctors, anything-goes team directors, and athletes so relentlessly driven to win that they would do almost anything to gain an edge. For the first time, Hamilton recounts his own battle with depression and tells the story of his complicated relationship with Lance Armstrong. This edition features a new Afterword, in which the authors reflect on the developments within the sport, and involving Armstrong, over the past year. The Secret Race is a courageous, groundbreaking act of witness from a man who is as determined to reveal the hard truth about his sport as he once was to win the Tour de France. With a new Afterword by the authors. “Loaded with bombshells and revelations.”—VeloNews “[An] often harrowing story . . . the broadest, most accessible look at cycling’s drug problems to date.”—The New York Times “ ‘If I cheated, how did I get away with it?’ That question, posed to SI by Lance Armstrong five years ago, has never been answered more definitively than it is in Tyler Hamilton’s new book.”—Sports Illustrated “Explosive.”—The Daily Telegraph (London)

Author: Jeroen Heijmans
Publisher: Scarecrow Press
ISBN: 0810871750
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 447

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Book Description
The nearly 150-year-old sport of cycling had its first competition in France in 1868. Soon afterward, the need arose for purpose-built cycling tracks because of poor road conditions at the time. Racing on blocked off pieces of street or grass soon evolvedinto racing on special tracks called velodromes. This development marked the split into what are still the two main forms of cycling competition: road racing and track racing. Initially, track cycling was more popular in terms of public attention and money to be earned by racers, but this gradually changed in favor of road racing, which has been the most popular form of cycling since at least the end of World War II. The Historical Dictionary of Cycling takes a closer look at the sport, as well asdiscussing the use of bicycles as a means of fitness, touring, and commuting. This is done through a chronology, an introductory essay, appendixes, photos, a bibliography, and over 500 cross-referenced dictionary entries on cycling's two main disciplines—road and track—as well as brief overviews of the other forms of cycling. This book is an excellent access point for students, researchers, and anyone wanting to know more about cycling.

Author: Phil Stead
Publisher: Y Lolfa
ISBN: 1784616796
Category : Sports & Recreation
Languages : en
Pages : 140

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Book Description
The story of a Welsh cycling fan's 25-year love affair with le Tour de France, culminating in the joy of witnessing Geraint Thomas' unexpected victory in summer 2018. Is this the greatest ever Welsh sporting achievement? How does an unassuming bloke from Whitchurch win le Tour de France? And what was it like to see Geraint win?

Author: Peter Cossins
Publisher: Bold Type Books
ISBN: 1568589859
Category : Sports & Recreation
Languages : en
Pages : 384

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Book Description
From its inception, the 1903 Tour de France was a colorful affair. Full of adventure, mishaps and audacious attempts at cheating, it was a race to be remembered. Cyclists of the time weren't enthusiastic about participating in this "heroic" race on roads more suited to hooves than wheels, with bikes weighing up to thirty-five pounds, on a single fixed gear, for three full weeks. Assembling enough riders for the race meant paying unemployed amateurs from the suburbs of Paris, including a butcher, a chimney sweep and a circus acrobat. From Maurice "The White Bulldog" Garin, an Italian-born Frenchman whose parents were said to have swapped him for a round of cheese in order to smuggle him into France as a fourteen-year-old, to Hippolyte Aucouturier, who looked like a villain from a Buster Keaton movie with his jersey of horizontal stripes and handlebar moustache, the cyclists were a remarkable bunch. Starting in the Parisian suburb of Montgeron, the route took the intrepid cyclists through Lyon, over the hills to Marseille, then on to Toulouse, Bordeaux, and Nantes, ending with great fanfare at the Parc des Princes in Paris. There was no indication that this ramshackle cycling pack would draw crowds to throng France's rutted roads and cheer the first Tour heroes. But they did; and all thanks to a marketing ruse, cycling would never be the same again.

Author: Daniel de Visé
Publisher: Atlantic Monthly Press
ISBN: 0802165796
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 473

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“Greg LeMond was Lance Armstrong before Lance Armstrong . . . the story of a true hero . . . This is a must read if you believe in miracles.”―John Feinstein, New York Times–bestselling author In July 1986, Greg LeMond stunned the sporting world by becoming the first American to win the Tour de France, the world’s pre-eminent bicycle race, defeating French cycling legend Bernard Hinault. Nine months later, LeMond lay in a hospital bed, his life in peril after a hunting accident, his career as a bicycle racer seemingly over. And yet, barely two years after this crisis, LeMond mounted a comeback almost without parallel in professional sports. In summer 1989, he again won the Tour—arguably the world’s most grueling athletic contest—by the almost impossibly narrow margin of 8 seconds over another French legend, Laurent Fignon. It remains the closest Tour de France in history. “[A] blend of chaos, kindness and cruelty typifies the scenes that journalist de Visé brings to life in this sympathetic-verging-on-reverential retelling of LeMond’s trailblazing career (first American to enter the tour, first to win it) . . . As an author in quest of his protagonist’s motivation, [de Visé] subjects it to extreme torque.”—The Washington Post “A great book . . . Well written and thoroughly researched . . . Engrossing and hard to put down. If you’re a Greg LeMond fan, The Comeback is a must read because it’s a detailed accounting of his career and―more importantly―his life and person off the bike. It’s also an important reminder that American cycling did not begin and end with Lance Armstrong.”—PEZ

Author: Michael Hutchinson
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1472925610
Category : Sports & Recreation
Languages : en
Pages : 353

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'As if Bill Bryson had taken to two wheels' - FT Somewhere in a German forest 200 years ago, during the darkest, wettest summer for centuries, the story of cycling began. The calls to ban it were more or less immediate. Re:Cyclists is the tale of the following two centuries. It tells how cycling became a kinky vaudeville act for Parisians, how it was the basis of an American business empire to rival Henry Ford's, and how it found a unique home in the British Isles. The Victorian love of cycling started with penny-farthing riders, who explored lonely roads that had been left abandoned by the coming of the railways. Then high-society took to it - in the 1980s the glittering parties of the London Season featured bicycles dancing in the ballroom, and every member of the House of Lords rode a bike. Twentieth-century cycling was very different, and even more popular. It became the sport and the pastime of millions of ordinary people who wanted to escape the city smog, or to experience the excitement of a weekend's racing. Cycling offered adventure and independence in the good times, and consolation during the war years and the Great Depression. Re:Cyclists tells the story of cycling's glories and also of its despairs, of how it only just avoided extinction in the motoring boom of the 1960s. And finally, at the dawn of the 21st century, it celebrates how cycling rose again - a little different, a lot more fashionable, but still about the same simple pleasures that it always has been: the wind in your face and the thrill of two-wheeled freedom.

Author: Moore Richard
Publisher: VeloPress
ISBN: 1937716120
Category : Sports & Recreation
Languages : en
Pages : 471

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Bernard Hinault is "Le Blaireau," the Badger. Tough as old boots, he is the old warrior of the French peloton, as revered as he is feared for his ferocious attacks. He has won 5 Tours de France, marking his name into the history books as a member of cycling's most exclusive club. Yet as the 1986 Tour de France ascends into the mountains, a boyish and friendly young American named Greg LeMond threatens the Badger--and France's entire cycling heritage. The stakes are high. Winning for Hinault means capping his long cycling career by becoming the first man to win the Tour six times. For LeMond, a win will bring America its first Tour de France victory. So why does their rivalry shock the world? LeMond and Hinault ride for the same team. Asked by a reporter why he attacked his own teammate, the Badger replies, "Because I felt like it." and "If he doesn't buckle, that means he's a champion and deserves to win the race. I did it for his own good." LeMond becomes paranoid, taking other riders' feed bags in the feed zone and blaming crashes on sabotage. Through it all, with the help of his American teammate Andy Hampsten, LeMond rides like a champion and becomes the first American to win the Tour de France. His win signals the passing of cycling's last hide-bound generation and the birth of a new breed of riders. In Slaying the Badger, award-winning author Richard Moore traces each story line to its source through innumerable interviews--not only with LeMond and Hinault in their own homes but also with teammates, rivals, race directors, journalists, sponsors, and promoters. Told from these many perspectives, the alliances, tirades, and broken promises divulged in Slaying the Badger build to the stunning climax of the 1986 Tour de France. Slaying the Badger is an incomparably detailed and highly revealing tale of cycling's most extraordinary rivalry.

Author: Jeff Connor
Publisher: Random House
ISBN: 1780572786
Category : Sports & Recreation
Languages : en
Pages : 230

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Book Description
In 1987, a British-based team competed in the Tour de France for the first time in almost two decades. The ANC-Halfords squad were decimated by the punishing pace, the manager walked out during one of the Alpine stages, five of the nine riders and some of the staff never made it to Paris, and most of the personnel went unpaid. ANC were the definitive innocents abroad and it became one of the great sporting misadventures of all time. If that wasn't bad enough for ANC, a tabloid journalist travelled with them for the full three weeks. Jeff Connor's account of the Tour, Wide-Eyed and Legless, became a classic and was later voted number one in Cycle Sport's list of the best cycling books of all time. Now, 25 years on, Connor revisits the scene of the crime, tracks down the participants and discovers exactly how their fortunes were changed, some irrevocably, by the '87 Tour. Field of Fire tells a moving tale of sporting disillusionment, heartbreak, anger - and humour.